I'll Take You There

by Wally Lamb

“But if your school’s in Chinatown, wouldn’t it make more sense to live there?” I asked, straight-faced. I was teasing her.

  “Well . . .” she said.

  “Hey, love is love. I think it’s cool.” She looked stunned that I’d figured it out.

  Simone was accepting of Fran and Molly’s relationship, too, despite the dictates of Roman Catholic dogma. If not exactly enthusiastic at first, Ma was okay with Frances’s coming out. She recognized that her complicated daughter was happy, and that’s all that mattered. Pop’s acceptance took a little longer. He was eventually won over by Molly’s chainsaw skills after a bad storm felled a willow tree in our backyard. It helped, too, that Molly was a baseball fan and Frances wasn’t. When the Red Sox (Molly’s team) played home games against the Yankees (Pop’s), she sometimes managed to score tickets. She and Pop bonded over Fenway franks, Hood ice cream bars, and their good-natured arguments about this classic American League rivalry.

  For a number of years, Frances and Molly lived and worked in the Worcester area in their respective fields, Molly at an animal hospital in Shrewsbury and Frances for a dental practice in Auburn. When they could afford to do so, they bought a nice piece of property in the Berkshires and built their home, a two-story log cabin situated on a ridgetop. Frances’s dental office and Molly’s animal clinic, twin wood-shingled ranch-style buildings with a parking lot between them, sit at the base of that ridge. It has taken a while for them to grow their respective practices, but at this point they’re both successfully established in the North Adams community. To get to their place, you take a left off Route 8 onto Hunter Foundry Road, cross over the brook, and you’ll see the sign on the right: Happy Tooth Dentistry and Happy Pets Veterinary Clinic.

  When the Massachusetts Supreme Court okayed gay marriage in 2004, Molly and Fran said their “I do’s” at the North Adams City Hall. Pop had died by then and Ma was too out of it to attend, but Simone, Aliza, my ex-wife Kat, and I were all there. It was a day to celebrate, and celebrate we did at the reception afterward at a nearby Grange hall—even the brides’ three pooches, Curly, Larry, and Moe. The dancing went on until midnight.

  Simone had made Frances aware of the existence of Verna’s diary many years earlier, warning her that it might upset her to read it but assuring her that she could take possession of it whenever she wanted. “You keep it,” Fran had told her. “I might want to look at it someday, but not right now.” The issue of the diary came up from time to time after that. Frances’s response was always the same. “Maybe someday. I’ll let you know.” Then, three or four years ago, when Fran and Molly were down at Simone’s for a visit, Molly asked if she could read it—that Frances had asked her to. Simone said sure. She retrieved it from an upstairs closet, came back down, and handed it to Molly. Simone told me later that Frances avoided looking at it. “What a gorgeous day!” Fran had said. “I think I’ll go for a walk.” Did she want company? Simone asked. “No thanks.” Fran and Molly drove back to North Adams that night.

  The next day, Frances called Simone to say that she’d decided she didn’t ever want to read her mother’s diary. “Are you sure?” Simone asked her.

  “It’s funny,” Frances said. “There’s a part of me that’s waited my whole life for her to come back. But she’s not coming back. Molly thinks it would be better if I didn’t have to hear what she went through, so I decided not to read it. And you know what? It’s like I’ve let go of this heavy weight I’ve been dragging around forever.”

  “Then what should I do with it?” Simone asked.

  “Her diary? I don’t know. Throw it out, I guess.”

  Simone told me that, after she hung up, she sat down and read each of Verna’s entries. “It sounds weird, Felix, but it was almost like she was speaking. Bearing witness from the dead or something. If I threw it out, it would be like silencing her. And I got to thinking that it wasn’t me who needed to hear her.”

  “Yeah, but if Fran doesn’t want to hear it, she shouldn’t have to.”

  “I’m not talking about Frances,” she said. “I don’t know if it was right or wrong. But what I did was, I put it in a padded envelope and sent it down to Boca.”

  “You mailed it to Uncle Iggy? Why?”

  “Because I thought it was time he bore some responsibility for everything that had happened. Way past time, actually. I almost called you to ask if I should send it to him, but then I decided not to because I didn’t want you to tell me I shouldn’t.”

  “Well, for whatever it’s worth, I don’t think I would have. Pop used to complain about how everyone treated his brother like an overgrown baby, but he used to enable him, too. Did you write Iggy a note or anything?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t have anything to say to him. She did. I put my return address on the envelope, so he knew who’d sent it, but . . . Oh, I don’t know. Was I an awful person to try to make him take some accountability after all this time?”

  “No, you weren’t. In fact, you’re the least awful person I know. What was his response? Did he call you? Write to you?”

  “Neither one. I have no idea if he even read it. His only response is that now, whenever I call him, all I get is his answering machine. And I know he has caller ID.”

  SIXTEEN

  That day back in 1965 when Uncle Iggy arrived at Frances’s family therapy session, a door had opened onto the possibility that he might bond, belatedly, with his daughter. But neither Uncle Iggy nor Frances chose to make that happen. Oh, they were polite to each other when we were all together for holidays at the house on Herbert Hoover Avenue. You could tell, though, that the close proximity made both of them uneasy. After he retired, Iggy relocated to Boca Raton, Florida, making their estrangement geographical as well as emotional. Iggy’s pattern continued: card games with cronies, a succession of lady friends, no commitments, no wife. What mere spouse ever could have doted on him the way Nonna Funicello had?

  Cigarette smoking and heart disease claimed my father in 2001. Cursed with stroke-related dementia, my mother lingered without him until 2005. My brother-in-law Jeff’s passing came soon after. And as if that wasn’t enough sadness for my sister Simone to abide, Luke, her only child, was diagnosed the following year with multiple sclerosis, the same disease that claimed our famous cousin, Annette. Bedridden near the end, Luke died from asphyxiation, choking on his breakfast while his mom vacuumed the living room. Simone’s path in life has been a difficult one, but she’s handled the heartaches and challenges with grace, good humor, and a faith so firm that she believes God’s plan, as unfathomable as it might be, is merciful.

  Uncle Iggy would call me from time to time from Florida, asking how I was doing and what I was up to. Somewhere in the middle of those conversations, he would want to know what I’d heard from my sister lately, and I always knew which sister he meant. He had met Molly at my parents’ house one Christmas and later, in a call to me, had asked just how “friendly” Fran and Molly’s friendship was.

  “If you’re asking me if they’re a couple, yes. They are.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured. Well, it’s none of my business.”

  Fran and her father were both in town for Pop’s funeral in 2001, but I can’t recall that they had much of any interaction during those two or three days. She didn’t invite him to her wedding. He did not fly up from Boca for my mother’s funeral the following year. His calls to me became less frequent and I got careless about calling him. Little by little, he began to fade away.

  And then one day I got a call from someone at his condo complex—one of his pinochle buddies. Iggy had been having some trouble with his balance, he said. He’d fallen twice, no serious injuries. He seemed mixed up sometimes, a little bit afraid of things you wouldn’t think he’d be afraid of. When he played cards, he couldn’t seem to concentrate. “He told me you’re his next of kin,” he said. “He didn’t want me to bother you, but I figured you’d want to know what’s going on.”

  After we hung up, I picked up
the phone and called Frances’s office. “Can I speak with Dr. Funicello?” I asked. The receptionist said she was in the middle of a root canal. “Then would you tell her to call her brother?” I asked.

  “Of course. May I tell her what this is in reference to?”

  “Sure. It’s about her . . . about our uncle.”

  Fran and I flew down to Boca together. Although I assured her I could handle it myself, I was relieved I didn’t have to. Tests were taken and retaken, followed by further tests. Whenever Iggy smiled at her, Frances wouldn’t or couldn’t smile back. We hired him a home health care aide and flew home after a couple of days while we waited for all the test results to come in. We were summoned back to Florida a few weeks later.

  At the medical center that housed the neurology team to which we’d been referred, Frances and I sat on either side of Iggy and listened to a middle-aged doctor whose name I’ve since forgotten. “It’s often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s because it has symptoms common to both,” she told us. “But we’re confident that Mr. Funicello is suffering from Lewy body dementia.” I looked out the window behind her, focusing not so much on what else she was saying as I was on the way the wind was tossing the fronds of the palm trees that lined the medical complex’s driveway. When I looked to my left at my uncle, he seemed not to be registering that the doctor was talking about him. Then I looked past him at my stricken sister.

  After we dropped Uncle Iggy back at his place, I said, “That doctor reminded me of someone, but I can’t figure out who.”

  “I know who it is,” Fran said. “Joanne Tate from Search for Tomorrow.”

  “That’s it! Shit man, all those problems she had to face. Who knew she was a neurologist on top of all that?” Our shared laughter relieved a little of the tension of the hour before.

  We worked as a team, Frances, Simone, and I. Two more trips down to Florida and several phone conversations later, we had accomplished everything we needed to: our uncle’s bills were paid, his bank accounts were closed, his things were packed up or donated, and his condo was put on the market. I looked for Verna’s diary among his possessions but didn’t find it. If he’d gotten rid of it, had he at least read it first?

  For the flight north, Iggy was sedated, the better to calm his anxiety and fend off one of the hallucinations that could throw him into a tailspin. At LaGuardia, Simone and I waited with Fran and our uncle during their layover. After they handed the agent their boarding passes and disappeared through the gate, Simone said, “I sure hope she’ll be able to handle this.” I reminded her that she’d have Molly’s help, and that it had been her decision to assume his power of attorney.

  Frances had secured her father a room at the Williamstown Commons Nursing Home. After a difficult first week, he more or less acclimated, or at least surrendered to his powerlessness. His fear-based tantrums subsided, but his balance became further compromised. With Frances’s reluctant okay, the staff began restraining him overnight so that he wouldn’t get out of bed, fall, and injure himself. Fran checked in on him three or four evenings a week, usually by herself but sometimes with Molly. One early Sunday morning about a month after he’d been admitted, the nurse on duty called to let Frances know that her father was close to the end. She and Molly hurried to the facility. Molly called later to tell me my uncle was gone. “Fran was holding his hand when he passed,” she said. “She was a trouper through this whole thing. I’m really proud of her.” I told her I was proud of her, too.

  Per his pre-Lewy body instructions, Uncle Iggy’s remains were transported back to Three Rivers for burial alongside his parents in the Funicello family plot at Good Shepherd Cemetery. For his wake, he was laid out in a charcoal gray suit, a periwinkle blue shirt, and a blue-and-gray-striped tie. Although he had never been a very religious man, his folded hands clutched a set of gold and amber rosary beads. His thumb, flattened long ago in the wringer of the family’s washing machine, was prominent.

  There were two wakes at the Labenski Funeral Home that evening: Uncle Iggy’s and, from the old neighborhood, Chiki Shishmanian’s. Chiki was the 101-year-old father of Shirley, JoBeth, and their brother, whom everyone still called Little Chiki. Before calling hours began, we chatted in the hallway with JoBeth, now a divorced grandmother whose face had the rosy flush of the alcoholic. “Is Shirley here?” Simone asked.

  JoBeth shook her head. “Couldn’t make it. When I called to tell her that Baba had passed, she had just come out of surgery. She sent an extravagant casket blanket, though: red, blue, and orange roses—the colors of the Armenian flag.”

  “I didn’t know there were blue roses,” I said.

  “Me neither,” JoBeth said. “Must have cost a fortune. Oh well, I’m sure she can afford it.”

  Simone said she hoped Shirley’s surgery wasn’t anything serious.

  “Face-lift number three, but who’s counting?” JoBeth said, smirking. “She told me she couldn’t be seen in public while she was still bruised and swollen like a battered wife. God forbid she’d just let gravity take its toll like the rest of us.” Her laughter sounded so bitter that it triggered nervous laughter in my sisters and me. We looked at JoBeth’s cell phone photos of her grandkids, reminisced a little about the old neighborhood, exchanged hugs, and then departed to our respective viewing rooms.

  “Three face-lifts?” Frances whispered to me.

  “Vanity, thy name is Dulcet Tone,” I whispered back. Shirley was still chasing beauty, surgically at this point. And who knows what toll it had taken on JoBeth never to have been able to grab the golden ring like her preternaturally beautiful sister had? If Frances had not gotten off that same merry-go-round, she could have starved herself to death trying to become . . . who? Simone? Miss Rheingold? A lesbian hiding in a conventional marriage?

  “If Shirley’s inherited her father’s longevity genes and makes it to her centennial, they’ll need a block and tackle to lift that face,” I noted. Fran guffawed.

  “Stop it, you two,” Simone scolded. “Be nice.”

  Calling hours went from five to seven. Across the hall, the local Armenians came out in force for Chiki Shishmanian, but attendance on our side was sparse. Most of the people who showed up had done so to pay their respects to Simone, the Funicello sibling who had remained in Three Rivers. I was pleasantly surprised when Aliza and her mother arrived. Kat had known Iggy, but she was certainly not obliged to pay respects to the uncle of her divorced husband. And by the time Aliza had come along, Iggy had already moved down to Florida. She’d met him once or twice, I guess, but that was it. Clearly, she and her mom had made the effort for me.

  Once calling hours were over, the six of us—Fran and Molly, Aliza and Kat, Simone and me—went back to Simone’s house. She’d made a big salad and a couple of antipasto platters and I opened the bottles of wine I’d brought. We had pizza delivered. There was a lot of laughter and remembrance during the meal, and Aliza seemed to get a kick out of listening to the old Funicello family stories: the time Pop had had to cut into the living room ceiling and pull out Winky’s kittens; my ill-fated appearance on the Ranger Andy show when I’d unwittingly told a dirty joke on live TV; Ma’s trip to California for the Pillsbury Bake-Off, courtesy of her culinary creation, Shepherd’s Pie Italiano. Simone said she still made that dish sometimes for potlucks at church. “But I use 93 percent lean ground beef and reduced-fat ricotta and mozzarella. And for the crust, I substitute olive oil for Crisco.”

  “You mean Fluffo,” Frances said. “Ma used Fluffo.”

  “Except when Crisco was on sale,” Simone said. “And I don’t even want to think about what Pop used in the fryolator down at the lunch counter. Whatever it was, it came in those unmarked one-gallon cans.”

  “Quaker State motor oil”—I said—“10W-30.”

  “Except when Valvoline was on sale,” Frances added.

  Simone turned to Aliza. “Your nonna and nonno had come of age during the Depression,” she explained.

  “So had
your Bubbe and Zayde Schulman,” Kat said. “I once caught hell for throwing away a piece of tinfoil. You never tossed that. You flattened and saved it.”

  I contributed that Ma was a cheapskate about tape: Scotch tape, masking tape, Band-Aids. “If you cut yourself and it didn’t need stitches, then you didn’t need a Band-Aid either. Put a little Mercurochrome on it, then stop whining and go back outside and play.” It was fun sharing these laughs over our forebears’ Depression-inspired thrift.

  At one point, Simone, the keeper of family pictures, disappeared upstairs and came back down carrying a large carton filled with scrapbooks, loose photos, and other memorabilia. Molly pulled Frances’s old 45s out of the box and said she and Fran must have been destined to end up together—that they had bought a lot of the same records. “Oh wow! I haven’t heard ‘Under My Thumb’ in forever. Simone, do you have anything that can play this thing?”

  “I think that old thing still works,” Simone said, pointing to the stereo housed inside the Pennsylvania Dutch–style cabinet she and Jeff had bought back in the seventies when they were setting up house. She removed the African violets and the doily from the top of it and I reached behind the console for the cord, fished it out, and plugged it into the nearest outlet. When I opened the lid of the cabinet, it creaked. But a flip of the switch started the turntable rotating and a minute later the Stones were coming through the speakers. It was 1966 again—the year of recovery for my anorexic sister. Molly started dancing by herself, then she pulled Frances off the couch and the two were dancing together. Aliza, a fan of old-school rock, got up and joined them. Simone, Kat, and I were smiling from the sidelines. At least I assumed Kat was smiling along with Simone and me until the music stopped abruptly and I looked over at her. She had pulled the plug.

  “Hey!” Molly protested.

  Kat had that adamant, lockjawed look on her face; as much as anything else, that look and my stubborn resistance to whatever it meant was responsible for our having reached the point of no return and divorced. “Don’t you people realize how demeaning those lyrics are?”